 The number of Internet users has doubled each year since 1988. Today, 26.4 million U.S. adults are using the World Wide Web and 39 million are communicating via email. |
| 31% of users access the Internet at least once a day, spending an average
of six hours and 40 minutes online every week. |
| Last year, 2.5 million people in the U.S. purchased products and services through the Web; sales from advertising alone reached nearly $43 million. Forecasts predict that total Internet and Web revenues from advertising, shopping, and banking will exceed $5 billion by the year 2000. |
| In the second half of 1995, investors poured billions of dollars into Internet stocks. Netscape Communications amassed a market value of several billion dollars based on third quarter 1995 revenues of approximately $20 million. |
| At a recent conference held in Boston by Forrester Research Inc., nearly half of the 216 corporate executives present said their companies would use the Internet for business transactions in 1996; 70% said they would do so by 1997. |
| U.S. and Canadian Web users have been found to be more affluent than the typical
population. 25% have a yearly income of more than $80,000 and 64% have a college degree. |
